This is good news IMO. Just means we're not where we thought we were defensively just yet, but we'll be there in another year or two. I'd say two years from now watch out for this defense. And by then Wilson should be hitting his stride and this offense might take off too. We could be looking at the beginning of a dynasty. This year is still it's growing pains.

Richard Sherman doesn't just wanna get in your head, he wants to build a vacation home there.

SalishHawkFan wrote:This is good news IMO. Just means we're not where we thought we were defensively just yet, but we'll be there in another year or two. I'd say two years from now watch out for this defense. And by then Wilson should be hitting his stride and this offense might take off too. We could be looking at the beginning of a dynasty. This year is still it's growing pains.

Yeah I love how our horrible performance was cause of a few guys taking maybe a step or two in the wrong direction lol easy fix

I don't know how easy a fix it is. It will take experience for KJ and Wright. Nothing can "fix" inexperience except experience. So they'll just have to get better, which they will. They've both got talent. It's just going to take time and us Hawk fans will have to be patient and lower our expectations for this year.

But you know...the playoffs can be a crap shoot and emotion can carry a team beyond its level. So there's plenty to root for this year.

Richard Sherman doesn't just wanna get in your head, he wants to build a vacation home there.

I wish Browner would have taken an inside position and prevented the slant route. To me this the biggest blunder of the game. I rewatched the replay and it was almost comical how Wagner ran into Thomas on the above play. If Wagner doesn't drop so far and KJ doesn't widen too much we make the tackle and go into overtime.

Hopefully these guys can learn from these correctable mistakes. I'm excited to see how the 2nd half of the season turns out.

jlwaters1 wrote:I wish Browner would have taken an inside position and prevented the slant route. To me this the biggest blunder of the game. I rewatched the replay and it was almost comical how Wagner ran into Thomas on the above play. If Wagner doesn't drop so far and KJ doesn't widen too much we make the tackle and go into overtime.

Hopefully these guys can learn from these correctable mistakes. I'm excited to see how the 2nd half of the season turns out.

Browner said after the game, the play call was a zone look and play the outside shoulder. I don't know who called that, but Browner is right when he said it's very hard to play a slant when that's the defensive play call.

jlwaters1 wrote:I wish Browner would have taken an inside position and prevented the slant route. To me this the biggest blunder of the game. I rewatched the replay and it was almost comical how Wagner ran into Thomas on the above play. If Wagner doesn't drop so far and KJ doesn't widen too much we make the tackle and go into overtime.

Hopefully these guys can learn from these correctable mistakes. I'm excited to see how the 2nd half of the season turns out.

The problem is we were in zone, so Browner was shading outside. We should have been man coverage, and Browner probably would have stuffed it.

Bad call by Bradley calling for a zone. He needs to get away from that, it's becoming a crutch again.

jlwaters1 wrote:I wish Browner would have taken an inside position and prevented the slant route. To me this the biggest blunder of the game. I rewatched the replay and it was almost comical how Wagner ran into Thomas on the above play. If Wagner doesn't drop so far and KJ doesn't widen too much we make the tackle and go into overtime.

Hopefully these guys can learn from these correctable mistakes. I'm excited to see how the 2nd half of the season turns out.

The problem is we were in zone, so Browner was shading outside. We should have been man coverage, and Browner probably would have stuffed it.

Bad call by Bradley calling for a zone. He needs to get away from that, it's becoming a crutch again.

Conversely, good read and throw by Stafford.

Even in zone you can play the inside. He should have jammed the guy. To me it sounds like an excuse. There's no way KJ could have made a play on the slant.

Wright took a gamble on that play that he had no business taking and got beat. Stay in your zone. Sherman can handle his man coverage by himself. Now I understand what Pete was saying when he said guys were trying to do too much.

Then you have Wagner, who ends up way to deep. Once again, stay in your damn zone. If either of these things didn't happen, the defense gets off the field.

CaptainSkybeard wrote:Wright took a gamble on that play that he had no business taking and got beat. Stay in your zone. Sherman can handle his man coverage by himself. Now I understand what Pete was saying when he said guys were trying to do too much.

Then you have Wagner, who ends up way to deep. Once again, stay in your damn zone. If either of these things didn't happen, the defense gets off the field.

Anybody else notice that the middle of the field is often so open that you could drive a bus up the middle?

CaptainSkybeard wrote:Wright took a gamble on that play that he had no business taking and got beat. Stay in your zone. Sherman can handle his man coverage by himself. Now I understand what Pete was saying when he said guys were trying to do too much.

Then you have Wagner, who ends up way to deep. Once again, stay in your damn zone. If either of these things didn't happen, the defense gets off the field.

Anybody else notice that the middle of the field is often so open that you could drive a bus up the middle?

Nope, never noticed that before. Not ever.

Richard Sherman doesn't just wanna get in your head, he wants to build a vacation home there.

MontanaHawk05 wrote:I do love how everyone on our defense learns from their mistakes and rarely repeats them.

Except for mistakes in that area in general. If you're referring to specific looks and plays, I hear ya. These guys are pretty sharp and usually adjust like 'The Borg Continuum' As promising as Wagner is looking, I see where he can really hurt at us times. How can he get the D properly aligned if he doesn't recognize what's happening in certain situations? I understand that Wright supports him in that regard, but in the play mentioned, KJ didn't know what was going on/where to be either. I suppose that is the double-edged sword of Pete's willingness to start young guys that show promising talent over older dudes that have reached their ceiling.

We may have to ride this out a bit longer. Let the 'accepting mediocrity' bombs fly

We used to have a linebacker that was super smart, graduated from Harvard and all.

But Issaih Kasavinski,(I'm pretty sure I misspelled his last name) was so good and so fast that he was always out of position. He would never hold his zone on the field and was burned so much Holmgren took him off the defense and made him a gunner on special teams.

Sounds to me as if this is a problem now with players thinking they can help on a play, leave their area of responsiblity and since that's what the offense wanted the play went through the abandoned area.

We're seeing that on punts/kickoffs lately too. Everyone running to the ball rather than holding their own area. I've said before any idiot can cover punts/kicks if they can block and hold coverage in their area of responsibility.

Are they perhaps trying to hard? Lets hope the coaching staff can handle these area, cause the staffs long term jobs depend on it.

jlwaters1 wrote:I wish Browner would have taken an inside position and prevented the slant route. To me this the biggest blunder of the game. I rewatched the replay and it was almost comical how Wagner ran into Thomas on the above play. If Wagner doesn't drop so far and KJ doesn't widen too much we make the tackle and go into overtime.

Hopefully these guys can learn from these correctable mistakes. I'm excited to see how the 2nd half of the season turns out.

The problem is we were in zone, so Browner was shading outside. We should have been man coverage, and Browner probably would have stuffed it.

Bad call by Bradley calling for a zone. He needs to get away from that, it's becoming a crutch again.

Conversely, good read and throw by Stafford.

even in zone, you don't have to play the outside shoulder, especially when the dudes already outside, he's not going anywhere but back to the middle of the field.. there was no room to run a out, or corner route, his only option was to cut inside

MontanaHawk05 wrote:I do love how everyone on our defense learns from their mistakes and rarely repeats them.

Me too....I realize we've had our 3rd down issues throughout the season, but overall, this is really the first bad GAME the defense has had.

We came out of the first half where I figured we needed to be to have a shot at the playoffs this year. The NFC is a little better than expected, but we are where we need to be after a very tough first half schedule.

It would have been perfect to have our bye this week, but luckily we are playing at home. Hopefully the Defense steps back up and keeps their home streak alive and we take these next two and get healthy before the long trip to Miami.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

Hate to say I told you guys so on Trufant. No wait... I don't. Scheme isn't helping here. Why aren't we rushing 3 and subbing out one more LB or DE for a CB/S? Seems like you'd get about as much pressure with Clem, Irvin, and Red/Mebane as a nose. Then you've got an extra guy to cover that "wide" area that's not getting covered underneath EVER. You could walk up a safety like they used to do with Lawyer Milloy. I thought that was how they were going to use Guy this year. It hasn't happened. Here you see the big results. If you bring somebody like that to watch that RB or that slot receiver coming across the middle then you've not only got an extra set of eyes on the guys sneaking under our coverage, but you have an extra body to cover for people and make the tackle. Clemons or Irvin aren't going to track back and make the tackle before it's a first down anyway, neither are Mebane or Red or Jason Jones. Bring in another quick guy that can hit.

I don't understand that zone call on Lions TD play. It doesn't makes sense to call a zone in a short field like that. It should have been all hands at LOS. They shouldn't have given any space for any receiver getting off the line. They could have easily ran it in with a zone defense. So it gives the team few more options rather than short pass.

ivotuk wrote:I think KJs reaction was a direct result of that 47 yard TD to Titus Young. Stafford probably showed something identical to that play which would have made Wright thought is was going to Titus.

And as for swapping out a D Lineman Shark, LeShoure was gashing us up the middle for 4.6 ypc, that could have the option had we gone to 3 down linemen.

I believe LeShoure was injured and out of the game by that point. Either way, I take out the lineman and risk the draw play from the shotgun formation on the 3rd and 10 from the 12. Come on... the run game isn't where we're getting gashed on 3rd down. It is on other downs. If they had run into that particular formation he wouldn't have made a TD and they would have been conceding the FG. I think it's worth it still to go to a 3 man rush when they've obviously gashed us 11/15 times to that point on 3rd downs. I don't think many of those were long runs. It was usually slant passes.

I figured that we'd have to deal with some rookie growth on the part of Wagner, but I really didn't account for that with Wright, even though I knew that his coverage was weaker than his run support (kinda hard not to be though, his play on the run is borderline Pro Bowl at this point). I actually thought Wagner would make a few more mistakes up to this point, although I've seen the depth thing before.

I also don't disagree with the 4 under zone here. It's a good play call, with man on the outside. Our CBs are long and athletic; in this down and distance their length is a huge asset since they're really not going to get beat deep at this point. Thomas has tons of range and can clean up, while our LBers have a lot of speed and can contain things in front of them. We also know Trufant will be assignment correct and will take care of his spot. We've been bitching about lack of pass rush, and I like rushing the 4 guys; theoretically with Bryant in there, we close down some throwing lanes and get a chance at a batted ball, plus if you give Stafford all day, he'll pick you apart eventually.

SharkHawk wrote:Hate to say I told you guys so on Trufant. No wait... I don't. Scheme isn't helping here. Why aren't we rushing 3 and subbing out one more LB or DE for a CB/S? Seems like you'd get about as much pressure with Clem, Irvin, and Red/Mebane as a nose. Then you've got an extra guy to cover that "wide" area that's not getting covered underneath EVER. You could walk up a safety like they used to do with Lawyer Milloy. I thought that was how they were going to use Guy this year. It hasn't happened. Here you see the big results. If you bring somebody like that to watch that RB or that slot receiver coming across the middle then you've not only got an extra set of eyes on the guys sneaking under our coverage, but you have an extra body to cover for people and make the tackle. Clemons or Irvin aren't going to track back and make the tackle before it's a first down anyway, neither are Mebane or Red or Jason Jones. Bring in another quick guy that can hit.

Hey, what do you know.... I'm an accidental genius! I really felt like the bolded part was the key, and that's exactly what they did. Johnson's sack early really set the tone, and they tightened up a ton. Using him was a smart move, and seemed pretty obvious. I'm glad the coaches did it and practiced it this week, particularly since KJ went out. They would have been boned had they not practiced to have an extra DB in the place of a LB on 3rd and long, but they practiced it and KJ got hurt, but they were still ok because everybody was ready. Johnson played extremely well all around today I thought. He was playing the position they had predicted for Winston Guy in the preseason and I'm quite impressed at what he did today, especially on his awareness to blitz Milloy style (with a ever so slight hesitation) and put Ponder on his butt. It set the tone and left Ponder below 100 yards passing.

Now really guys... wasn't it worth it to wait a year and not take Ponder or Dalton and get Wilson in the 3rd this year? I think we're on to something... as long as it translates to a road game or two by the end of the year then we're going to be a step up on both Cinci and Minnesota in our development for next year, and make the rough road of the last couple of years and parts of this year worth it.